Karen Blixen recounts a story that she was told as a child. A man, who lived by a pond, was awakened one night by a great noise. He went out into the night and headed to the pond, but in the darkness, running up and down, back and forth, guided only by the noise he stumbled and fell repeatedly. At last, he found a leak in the dyke, from which water and fish were escaping. He set to work plugging the leak and only when he had finished went back to bed. The next morning, looking out of the window he saw with surprise that his footprints had traced the figure of a stork on the ground At this point Karen Blixen asks herself: ‘When the design of my life is complete, will I see, or will others see a stork?’